


The Lay of the Love and Death

by MaeChrys



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, fluff itself, i need some softness in my life, it's just soft okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25538305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaeChrys/pseuds/MaeChrys
Summary: He’s afraid they are losing all of this. He feels like he needs to put a mark in the flow of history- of their history. He feels like, if the world is going to spin itself out of the sky, then they need to be the only still star in the firmament. Together.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 2
Kudos: 112





	The Lay of the Love and Death

It’s just a small silver band. It means nothing more than what it is, really. Except it glistens so beautifully in the light of the campfire, and it holds the light of all the stars in the sky and all the meanings that comes with it. And Joe knows it.

————————

“You think he’ll say yes?” Joe sounds nervous, his words get jumbled up on his lips as he turns to Andy, fiddling with the ring. She turns back with her eyebrow slightly raised, before laughing straight in his face. “Of course he will, Joe. You guys are practically married already”  
Joe blushes and slides the ring back in his jeans back pocket. “Yeah but... you know, it’s the gesture. The idea” he looks up to the dark sky, his eyes gazing up and getting lost in the clouds “My husband. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”  
Andy puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder and smiles to him fondly, warmly, a smile that cracks her bones and jawline face up in a way that makes her look even more beautiful “I’m sure he’ll love it. It’s like you said, you were meant to be”

————————

The world has gotten so small in the last couple of centuries. It took Quynh and Andy 150 years to find Joe and Nicky, and then it took them a good 11 months to find Booker. It took Andy 8 hours to find Nile.  
That makes Joe scared more than anything, how close everything is now. How easy, and, therefore, how incredibly hard things seem to have become. He know what easy things are. He knows what it feels like to hold Nicky while he sleeps. He know what wine he likes and why he doesn’t drink beer anymore. He knows what poets he likes and which one they marched down half the earth to meet. How excited he was when he was sitting at Rilke’s readings, squeezing Joe’s hand. It took them 5 days to get to Germany from Palermo. They took a train, and then a van, and then they walked, hand in hand. On the train, Nicky was learning German, one of Rilke’s books in his hands.  
“ _Da stieg ein Baum. O reine… o reine Übersteigung! O Orpheus singt! O hoher Baum im Ohr. Und alles schwieg. Doch selbst in der… der… der Verschweigung ging neuer Anfang, Wink und Wandlung vor._ ”  
“I think your vowels are a little up your nose” Joe had said, his head buried in his sketchbook  
“I think your head is a little up your ass”  
Joe had laughed, that hearty, belly laugh that Nicky loved so much. “Don’t worry, Nicky. You’ll surely impress Reine Maria Rilke with your looks, if not with your wit”  
“The ways you hurt me, Infidel”  
Joe still remembers all the moments they shared while braving that vast, infinite world. Every minute, every hour, every walk under the stars and every horse ride under the scorching sun. He holds all those moments dear, close to his heart, each of them more precious than the last.  
And he’s afraid they are losing all of this. He feels like he needs to put a mark in the flow of history- of their history. He feels like, if the world is going to spin itself out of the sky, then they need to be the only still star in the firmament. Together.

————————

Joe bought a first edition of the Sonnets to Orpheus a couple of months back. It seemed insane to him that something so new, something that is barely a hundred years old, came at such steep a price. But it was for Nicky, so he paid it willingly.  
He hid the book in his bag for all this time, he had a whole plan in mind. Give him the book, ask him to read the first sonnet, just like they did that night on the train. Then, while he’s focused on his german, whip out the ring, get down on one knee, surprise him by the fire.  
Extremely romantic. Extremely well thought out.  
Extremely unsuspecting that Nicky would use that exact same bag to put his blood covered clothes to keep, for the next time they find a washing machine. Now every page of the book looks like an unreasonably expensive Rorschach test made of pieces of skin and cerebral matter.  
He is sitting on the floor of the abandoned hotel they’ve been living in for the past couple of weeks with the book in his hands when Nicky walks in. He tries to hide it hastily and fails.  
Nicky gets closer with a smirk on his face. “Have you finally decided you’re gonna try to learn how to read?” Joe knows it’s a joke, but for some reason he feels embarrassed like he’s never felt before, like a child who was found stealing cookies from the jar.  
“It was- it was meant to be a gift. For you. But I fucked it up” Nicky’s smirk gets softer as he sits down next to Joe, one arm around his waist pulling him closer and taking the book from his hands. He turns the cover to read the title and his face lights up when he can make out the words among the blood stains and pieces of skull. “Oh, you” his throat is a little closed up, and that makes all fear and all worry was away from Joe “I love it, _habibi_ ” he kisses him softly before nipping a little at his lips, moving on hand into Joe’s curls and holding the book between their chests.  
He can feel Nicky smiling against his own lips and he kisses him back.  
“ _Ti amo, Nicolò_ ”  
“ _Anch’io_ , Yusuf. _Andiamo di sopra?_ ” Joe smile and nods.  
He still notices how, when Nicky leads him upstair, he brings the book with him, clutching it close to his heart.  
This is the man destiny chose for him.  
This is the man he wants.  
This is the man he loves. 

  
————————

He has a new plan. He’ll just give Nicky the ring, and to hell with balloons and airplanes reveals and clouds writing out their names. He’s sure Nicky would hate all of those things anyway.  
He’ll just give him the ring, and hope for the best.  
As he realises this, he’s in the makeshift bathroom of the camp, watching his own reflection in the mirror. He tried to comb his hair and he shaved his beard for the first time in what feels like the best part of a decade. He even put on perfume and now he smells like a brothel in Samarqand. The ring in question is a thick, silver band that Joe - back when he still called himself Yusuf - bought at a market in Antioch. He was so young back then, he hadn’t died yet. He has forgotten most of that times, it's just one big golden blur of a memory, but he remembers his mother’s voice before he left. Her face is just a brown and red smudge in the back of is mind, but her voice is so clear, crystalline.  
“Buy a ring before you become a soldier, Yusuf. Buy it so it won’t be stained with the deaths of those who get in your way. And when you find her, when you know it’s her, you’ll give her a ring that was not tainted by death”  
He doesn’t remember his mother’s face, but he can imagine what she would say. What she would think.  
He looks at the reflection of the ring in the mirror. He can’t, really, though, can he? The world has changed so much, so utterly, that she wouldn’t be able to grasp it even if she tried, and he wouldn’t be able to explain it to her. How he died and came back to life more times than he cares to count. How he fell in love with a Frank, a crusader. An invader. How they killed and loved each other so deeply he can’t say where the first ends and the latter begins.  
How he taught him what it means to love through the words of a German poet.  
How he’s just going to take that ring right now. And screw everything else.

————————

Andy is asleep just a little further away, her back turned to Booker. Neither of them can hear them, and for that Joe is glad. They would never let him live it down if they could.  
He is looking at Nicky with a soft smile on his lips, orange flashes lapping at his blonde hair.  
“You even got down on one knee” Nicky’s words die in his throat, he has to swallow them together with a sigh. The happiest of sighs.  
“I brought this with me all the way from Antioch” Nicky feels his cheeks losing all color, and his legs can’t quite support him. He takes Joe’s face in his hands and looks into his eyes. All of a sudden he can feel tears streaming down his cheeks, falling on Joe’s face and on his hands. Joe is still smiling through it all, that soft, smug smile. “It’s just a ring, crusader” Nicky nods between the sobs, holding his forehead to Joe’s “It’s just a ring” he repeats with scattered words.  
They’ve been in this together for so long Nicky can’t really imagine how it would be without Joe. What would it mean to wake up without his arms around his chest, to get into battle knowing that he isn’t right there beside him.  
He doesn’t want to, either. He kisses Joe’s lips tenderly, nodding, and Joe lets out the smallest sigh of relief.  
“I thought you’d never ask”  
“I thought your god would never let me” it takes them a second before Nicky lets Joe put the ring on his finger and looks at it against the fire. “You know” Joe begins, holding him close between one kiss and the next “This is what the book was for. I had a whole plan in mind. It was extremely romantic”  
“ _Und diese menschlichere Liebe (die unendlich rücksichtsvoll und leise, und gut und klar in Binden und Lösen sich vollziehen wird) wird jener ähneln, die wir ringend und mühsam vorbereiten, der Liebe, die darin besteht, daß zwei Einsamkeiten einander schützen, grenzen und grüßen_.”  
“I’m sure I agree”  
“All this time, Infidel” Nicky laughs softly, kissing him back “All this time, and I still can’t make you appreciate good art” Joe looks at Nicky like it’s the first time.  
And, he thinks, maybe it is.  
“But I do”.

**Author's Note:**

> In my headcanon Nicky loves Rilke cause it's the new hip thing the kids like. In like, 1902.  
> Also, he's Rilke.


End file.
